> I've been all over the world, and it is straight up fucked how bad this issue is in the US and it's not like this elsewhere.
Not trying to defend US or its telecoms here, but I think it has more to do with scammers trying to maximize for profit.
Just like with malware heavily targeting Windows instead of macOS/Linux, or some apps prioritizing iOS instead of Android (by either launching as iOS-only and then introducing an Android version later, or just not holding up the quality and polish of the iOS version on Android). It isn't because Windows is inherently more insecure, and not because Android is a worse platform. It is simply because it makes sense moneywise.
Why would a scammer focus on targeting low-disposable-income countries, if they, on average, can extract as much money from one US person as they would have to from 10-15 people in Phillipines. For scammers, it seems to be simply more profitable and efficient to target US residents.
Are you implying US is the only non-low-disposable-income country? lol. This isn't a problem in say, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, etc., as it is in the US.
Also, the most spammed country appears to be Brazil, and it is far from the top of the disposable income lists. Many among the most spammed countries don't register on the top disposable income lists.
There's something else at play here. Likely legislation/regulation.
Your spam info link is to Truecaller, which measures how much their users in each country get spam calls. That's definitely not a random sample of each country's users, so it's hard to say whether their conclusions are correct.
I hadn't considered the money angle before, but it makes a lot of sense. The poorest US state (Mississippi) has higher per capita disposable income than the 6th highest-ranked country (Norway). Every state other than Mississippi has a higher per capita disposable income than Australia. There are a ton of Americans, they're rich, and almost all of them speak the most popular language on the planet. The US has a high fraction of immigrants (12% of the population), so many Americans aren't immediately suspicious of accents. Compared to other countries, the US is a big juicy target.
> Are you implying US is the only non-low-disposable-income country?
Not at all. The rest are just not that viable for a multitude of reasons. How many people do Switzerland and Australia have, compared to the US? Much less. And Japan isn't english-speaking, so I dont expect foreign scammers putting effort into learning japanese just for that. They already struggle enough with english.
To be fair, all of that is just me trying to reason through it myself, so there definitely could be other reasons at play here as well.
> Why would a scammer focus on targeting low-disposable-income countries, if they, on average, can extract as much money from one US person as they would have to from 10-15 people in Phillipines.
I don't think anyone disputes this, but apart from Canada (which has a largely similar telco structure) no other developed country has this plague of undesirable robocalls. You could probably net a similar payout in the UK or Germany but as far as I'm aware there isn't a robocall problem in Europe (and the only problem that is remotely telephone-related is those scare scams where a malicious ad displays a number to be called, not the other way around).
This is nothing to do with low or high income countries. Europe exists. I've lived (and had local phones) in Ireland, Germany and the UK. I've never had a spam call. I've had less than 10 spam texts ever. The US (from an outsider perspective) just doesn't seem to enforce consumer protections in general.
Not trying to defend US or its telecoms here, but I think it has more to do with scammers trying to maximize for profit.
Just like with malware heavily targeting Windows instead of macOS/Linux, or some apps prioritizing iOS instead of Android (by either launching as iOS-only and then introducing an Android version later, or just not holding up the quality and polish of the iOS version on Android). It isn't because Windows is inherently more insecure, and not because Android is a worse platform. It is simply because it makes sense moneywise.
Why would a scammer focus on targeting low-disposable-income countries, if they, on average, can extract as much money from one US person as they would have to from 10-15 people in Phillipines. For scammers, it seems to be simply more profitable and efficient to target US residents.